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5 Reasons Why Our Cable Company Needs Niche Marketing Lessons

Our cable company gave us a perfect case study in horrible niche marketing. One of their recent TV commercials really shows why if you don’t know your niche you’re toast. You’ll understand why it was so bad in a minute but first a bit of background.

We were both athletes growing up and still love sports to this day. I guarantee that when there’s a major sporting event happening, we don’t think about our small internet business, 46 and 47, at all. Unless it’s a timeout or halftime or something. Unfortunately, we don’t get any work done then either. Anyway, the point is we’re both huge sports fans and when a commercial targeted at us came on TV we both actually paid attention and listened. It went like this.

Basketball Fan is watching the big game and his team is down by 2 with the ball with like 30 seconds left.

The phone rings and it’s Basketball Fan’s brother who’s a fan of the opposing team.

Basketball Fan doesn’t have to get up to see who’s calling because a name and number from caller id magically appear on his television.

Basketball Fan sees that it’s his brother calling to say something like “Ha, ha, sucker! Basketball Fan’s team is going to lose!”

Basketball Fan’s team hits a 3 at the buzzer for the win, Basketball Fan celebrates, and answers the phone to tease his brother.

That sequence of 5 events illustrates why they should have let a sports fan read the script before wasting their money. It’s wrong to us on so many levels. We just looked at each other as it played and started ripping the commercial to shreds in tag team fake wrestling style.

(46) Who the heck’s calling me during the big game? It’s gotta be a telemarketer.
(47) No kidding! Everybody knows not to call us during the big game. I wouldn’t answer the phone.
(46) It’s a 2 point game!
(47) With 30 seconds left!!
(46) That’s still anybody’s game!!!
(47) What do you mean it’s my brother?
(46) Why is my brother stupid enough to talk trash during a 2 point game with 30 seconds left.
(47) What an idiot. He’s not really a fan if he’s not sweating bullets right now.
(46) What’s up with that stupid caller id box?
(47) Yeah, it’s covering up part of the screen!
(46) Did sports fans make this?
(47) No way. There’s absolutely no way.
(46) You deserve to lose if you talk trash during a 2 point game.

Needless to say, there’s no freaking way either of us will ever sign up for that stupid “caller id on TV” thingy. The marketing department showed us exactly why we shouldn’t buy it with that commercial. I just hope none of the non-sports people in our family ever buy us one as a gift.

We sure learned a valuable marketing lesson from our cable company. They got the details of each tree correct (sport, point differential, time left on the clock, etc) but completely burned down the forest. Almost anyone in that niche could have told them they were doomed.

Have any of you seen marketing that makes you not want to buy something even though you’re obviously the target audience?

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Hoping none of our website marketing makes people blog about how bad it is.